Lountza

Lountza is Cyprus's best-known cured meat: a pork loin that is salted, marinated in red wine, rolled in coriander seed and then smoked over aromatic wood. The result is a firm, dark, lightly smoky cured loin with the wine and coriander flavours that run through a lot of Cypriot pork cooking. It is closely tied to the Pitsilia area in the hills, where the cool climate suited the old curing and smoking traditions.

You meet lountza two ways. On a meze table it is sliced thin and served cold alongside other Cypriot charcuterie and cheeses. More often, visitors meet it grilled: a hot lountza-and-halloumi sandwich is one of the most common quick meals on the island, sold at village kiosks and bakeries. The salty cheese and the smoky, wine-cured pork are a natural pair, which is why the two are so often served together.

Where to try it

• Sliced cold on meze platters across Limassol, Larnaca and Nicosia.
• Grilled with halloumi in a sandwich at kiosks and bakeries.
• At mountain tavernas in and around the Troodos mountains, near its Pitsilia home.

The name comes from the Italian word for loin, a trace of the centuries when Genoese and Venetian merchants were active on the island. Lountza belongs to the same family of traditional Cypriot cured meats as hiromeri (a larger cured pork ham) and tsamarella (a sun-dried, salted goat product), all made to preserve meat through the year. Try it as part of a full meze rather than on its own, and pair it with a local wine from the Commandaria wine country southwest of Troodos.